3 ms·
That is exactly my point. If you've never heard a word you can never know how it's pronounced. That's not the case with Spanish where I can make up a word and e
by mwyah 7y ago
That is exactly my point. If you've never heard a word you can never know how it's pronounced. That's not the case with Spanish where I can make up a word and everybody will pronounce it (almost) the same way.
- enriquto 7y agoThis is not exactly true. There are some fundamental differences between spanish dialects. For example, "yo", "calle", are pronounced in an unrecognizable way between Argentina and Spain. But I agree that the mapping from written to spoken spanish is mostly deterministic (like that for French, Italian, and other romance languages). The mapping from spoken to written, of course, is not deterministic at all, which you can verify by looking at how illiterate spanish-speakers try to write.
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoCuriously, Polish is apparently spelled phonetically. Know the sound of the letters, you can read out a Polish newspaper and sound pretty much like a native speaker.
- HappySweeney 7y agoSame with Hungarian (Magyar). Spelling is over by grade 2.